From early Spring Classics like Milan-San Remo all the way through to the World Championships, cycling is full of big races – each packaged with big emotions, big fan bases and big winner’s cheques.
But can you really say you’ve made it in the men’s WorldTour peloton until you’ve seen the Eiffel Tower hove into view, on the 21st back-to-back day of racing yourself into oblivion around France?
To complete the Tour de France, so they say, is to become a king of the road – and in this year’s race there were 49 of them attempting to complete the feat – not all of those riders managed to finish the race, but with only one stage to go, the vast majority were set to do so.
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Despite the increasing popularity of races like the Giro d’Italia, and the cultural iconicity of one-dayers like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, the Tour de France remains the race in the minds of many riders and fans.
Everything at the Tour is, they say, on ‘another level’. That might apply to the enormous entourage that follows the race around the country each July, comprising media, team staff and ASO’s Tour organisation.
But it also applies to the speed and ferocity of the race, which riders deem to be harder and faster than anything else. As they (might) say in France, “le Tour, c’est extra!”
Almost every young hopeful will have followed the Tour as they rose through the junior and amateur ranks and, eventually, heard their older team-mates’ stories of the race too. Getting to actually ride it, for most riders, remains the ultimate notch on a palmarès.
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These days, with modern training, fuelling and recovery, riders are finding themselves on the start line as young as 19 years old – and actually making the racing too.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“It’s obviously a massive bucket list thing just to be selected by the team,” Sean Flynn of Picnic PostNL told Cycling Weekly. “To finish it would be really something special. To roll into Paris, you hear that it’s a really nice feeling, and a cool experience. That would mean a lot.
“Then you can say you’ve really done the Tour,” he added. “I’ve earned my spot obviously, but I want to get through the whole thing.”
EF Education-EasyPost rider Alex Baudin said: “It’s always been a dream of mine to race the Tour. And now that I’m here, I’m really enjoying it. Day after day, I can see the Tour is really the biggest race in the world and one of the biggest sports events in the world. Every day the amount of people on the road, at the start and the finish lines, it’s just crazy.”
Speaking at the end of the second week British debutant Lewis Askey (Groupama-FDJ) said that finishing the race remained his number one focus.
“It’s my first Tour de France. I think that’s why it’s important to kind of get that done,” said the 24-year-old Groupama-FDJ rider. Then I can come back in the future and not have that stress of finishing on my shoulders. At the moment, I’m supposed I’m a little bit scared to absolutely explode myself on one day and not make it through the next day. Whereas I suppose if I do make it to Paris, then next time I’d be less scared to kind of throw it away.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Flynn tells a similar story of the angst of the hopeful first-timer, for whom making it to Paris ranks highly on the list of Tour de France goals.
“There are certain things out of my control, but I’m confident in my level in general on the hard mountain stages,” he says. “But you never know when you could have a really hard day. It could happen to anyone, even a good climber. If you have a bad day or a bad moment, that could be it. That plays on your mind a little bit, but I just try to get through.”
Unsurprisingly though, it’s not all about finishing the race for the debutants. There are some who came here to make an impact.
Proven talents like Lidl-Trek‘s Jonathan Milan, for example, who is wearing the green jersey and has two stage victories to his name with a day to go on the race. Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal Quick-Step) too, who won one of the race’s most prestigious stages on Mont Ventoux in his first participation. He called his win “truly extraordinary”, adding: “Everybody knows me now – they’re all shouting my name.”
That’s the effect of the Tour.
Despite being not only the youngest debutant but the youngest rider in the entire race, Movistar’s Iván Romeo came here with his own plans too.
Of course I want to finish. I want to be at Paris, and more than that I still have a lot of goals,” said the 21-year-old Spaniard, who placed a very creditable seventh in the stage five time trial in Caen. “I still have some stages in my mind to go for the win, in the breakaway. I won’t stop time at that.
He added: “Also Enric [Mas] lost time on GC so he’s also going for stages so I have to be there helping him. It would mean everything, and I’m going to fight for it.”
In the clamour for stage wins and even a stint in yellow, it’s easy to forget that just riding Tour represents the pinnacle of the sport. To be selected, to ride, and to finish is an incredible feat in and of itself. Kings of the road indeed.